Friday, April 03, 2020

In clinical study, blood test can detect more than 50 types of cancers

Good news! Cancer is history!

However, there appears to be a catch: The test seems to do only very well in late stage cancer test subjects. 

"In a study involving thousands of participants, a new blood test detected more than 50 types of cancer as well as their location within the body with a high degree of accuracy, according to an international team of researchers led by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a Harvard affiliate, and the Mayo Clinic. ... the test uses next-generation sequencing to analyze the arrangement of chemical units called methyl groups on the DNA of cancer cells.  ... In cancer cells, the placement of methyl groups, or methylation pattern, is often markedly different from that of normal cells — to the extent that abnormal methylation patterns are even more characteristic of cancer cells than genetic mutations are. ..."

In clinical study, blood test can detect range of cancers – Harvard Gazette: In a study involving thousands of participants, a new blood test detected more than 50 types of cancer as well as their location within the body with a high degree of accuracy.

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